Tag: Vampire

"Hello! Do you have a minute to talk about Dracula?""No- wait, Dracula?""Yes!""You're vampires?""Yes. We have pamphlets.""Vampires have missionaries?""Where else would new vampires come from?""I assumed you bit people.""There are many hurtful stereotypes. May we come in?"

Did you hear the one about the Vampire, the Were, the Shifter, and the Barmaid?

In this final Sookie Stackhouse novel, Sookie discovers she has many enemies. One group decide to frame her for murder. Another group decide to just murder her. Another decides to steal her boyfriend. Her friends have other ideas about letting any of that happen without a fight.

I haven’t been closely following Charlaine Harris’ series. I’ve enjoyed all the instalments I’ve read so far, and Dead Ever After was no exception. Although, I was surprised to discover this was the final novel in the Sookie Stackhouse series.* This felt like any other instalment in the series to me.

Apparently fans of the series were annoyed with the less than satisfactory ending. A lot of one star reviews have been thrown at this book. One thing seems clear, Sookie didn’t end up with the right guy. Apparently. So if you are an invested fan, this book will probably be used to heat your home in winter. For the less invested fans, this will be regarded as a solid instalment to the series.

*Yes, I can see the tagline on the bottom of the cover. Kinda hard to read when it is thumbnail sized though.

I bought this novel after watching the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth. If you haven’t watched that movie, do so now. In fairness though, this novel has more in common with Del Toro’s contribution to the Blade series of movies than it does to Pan’s Labyrinth.

This is another take on the viral outbreak thriller, thankfully it doesn’t take it down the path of zombies, as most recent novels in this genre have done. Non-sparkly vampires are back!

The only disappointment for me was that this was definitely the first instalment in a trilogy and felt a little more unfinished than I’d have liked. The writing is very reminiscent of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Prendergast series. Worth a read for horror and thriller fans.

Every time I walk past a book store I just have to take a wander through and see what is on the shelf. The last time I saw two books that caught my eye, Luther: The Calling and Red White and Blood. I’d never heard of the latter, never heard of the author, Christopher Farnsworth, and this was the most recent in a three book series.

Sadly I’ve been burnt before, so I only walked out of the store with Luther. No matter how interesting this book looked, it was about vampires, politics and secrets, this could have been Twilight in the Whitehouse for all I knew. So instead I contacted my trusty local librarian and asked if they had any of the books on the shelves, they had all three. I’m glad they had them all.

Chris’s writing is witty, fast paced and well crafted. Essentially he has written a supernatural thriller in direct opposition to the sparkly lameness that has infected the supernatural genre. Despite the themes, the line isn’t crossed into horror territory, remaining firmly enjoyable to thriller fans who don’t like the gore aspect.

In short, I won’t be getting to Luther: The Calling, until after I finish all three of Chris’ Nathaniel Cade novels.

Goodreads Reviews

Is it okay to punch Nazis? What if I told you that is only one of the tactics for dealing with Nazis?
The Anti-Fascist Handbook aims to summarise the history of fascism and its opponents, the rise of more recent fascist groups, the less...

Being prophetic is really easy when you make a "kids these days" argument.
Amusing Ourselves to Death is Neil Postman's ode to the "good old days" before television when entertainment wasn't ruining everything. TV bad, reading good!
I ...

Believe in something. Anything. No, not that. No, best not that either.
It's Hogswatch, the time of year for carol singing, presents, warm alcoholic drinks, and giant department stores to sell lots of stuff. But some "people" have hire...

When you sit, sit. When you browse Twitter, browse Twitter... Maybe there's a reason social media causes stress.
The Way of Zen by Alan Watts is an introduction to Zen Buddism and its roots in Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. It was one of...

I wasn't aware of the new Marvel Star Wars comics until I stumbled on this series. A pretty cool take on Star Wars and better than many of the other (no longer canon) comics. But Vader is given a pretty major power upgrade and much of th...